Paramount Television Animation/Tropes
Paramount Television Animation is the television animation production arm of Paramount Pictures. It serves as the revival/reboot of Paramount Cartoon Studios. It was founded on January 7, 1981. Tropes *'Animation Bump:' Jon McClenahan's early animation work in the 80's. Also, the studio began to shift back to a style of the Golden Age of Animation by the early to mid-90's. *'Animation Changes:' After a decade of Hanna-Barbera-styled sentimentality and comedy between 1981 and 1990, animators such as Jim Smith and Eddie Fitzgerald would pull the studio in the exact opposite direction of them around 1991, featuring more street smart, contemporary gags and sardonic, earthy humor. Other shows in particular tended to have some rather cold, morally gray or just plain scary elements. *'Art Evolution:' The earliest animated television shows had a very strong Hanna-Barbera influence in both their writing and animation (no surprise, considering the studio worked on some shows in conjunction with Hanna-Barbera). But in the early to mid 90's, animators such as Jim Smith and Eddie Fitzgerald slowly but surely began trying to veer off into a less Hanna-Barbera like cartoon style. Jon McClenahan initially did Hanna-Barbera-like segments with The Noveltoons Show, until he decided to drop the strictly formulaic stuff of Saturday Morning television by 1990 and do more comical cartoons more similar to the 1940s-early 1950s Noveltoons shorts, and while the creator-driven artists had already abandoned most of the 1980s Hanna-Barbera-esque art by the 90's, Jon McClenahan and Spike Brandt's personal art styles wiped out any remaining trace of the original Hanna-Barbera influence that was clinging to the studio at that point. *'Darker and Edgier:' The studio have produced some shows that are aimed to mature audiences. *'Deranged Animation:' The 1990s decade was this, after breaking away from the rules of typical Saturday Morning cartoon shows. *'Early Installment Weirdness:' The early TV shows before 1990 are very, very different from the shows most of us are familiar with from childhood, to where one would be hard pressed to believe they're part of the same series as Harveytoons. The differences are as follows: **First, the art style is completely different; the characters were drawn in a mix of Bob Singer and Iwao Takamoto's styles that were common in the 80s back then. **The strong individual directing styles, post-modernistic humor, fourth wall busting and satirical comedy that the iconic studio are known for is virtually nonexistent; the gags are standard slapstick and surreal distortions of the characters, with occasional vulgar humor sandwiched in. **The crop of shows from circa the 1981 to 1990 period also tended to have sentimental or juvenile 1980s Hanna-Barbera style content and humor, a mindset that the studio would eventually become the total antithesis of. The early work of Jon McClenahan up to around 1990 likewise aimed for this, and it's a startling contrast to his more famous work. **In contrast to the wide ensemble of television shows featuring characters with distinct personalities littered through both the character driven and oneshot cartoons, the early 1980s shows relied on characters with either one-dimensional or nondescript personalities. The early shows also had no major or recurring characters outside of it. Stock funny animal characters also tended to pop up more than cartoon humans in these early shows, and even the ones that did pop up tended to be celebrity caricatures drawn in a similar style of Hanna-Barbera, instead of the more observant caricature style the series eventually settled into. Of the series iconic cast, only some of its former major stars (Betty Boop and Casper) are present in the 1980's. **The musical style of the shows before the 90's, which by means featuring excellent songs and compositions, was much more standard musical fare than the distinctive, energetic musical style of Stalling brought to the later shows. *'Limited Animation:' Their earlier works in the 1980s were this, before they decided to abandon it altogether in the next decade and go with utilizing full animation. *'Wackier and Denser:' Trivia * Executive Meddling: YMMV * Dork Age: Most, if not all, shows produced after 2004 are often considered as such. ** Far earlier than that, the studio went through an early dork age during the period after network budget cuts occurred in the late 80's, resulting in a huge downslide in quality of writing and animation. Fortunately, the arrival of creator-driven artists began pulling the studio out of this from 1990 and onward.